Originally posted by citanon
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Bulava ain't coming in fast enough to replace older R-29 iterations for SLBM (not that Russia's really building any SSBN in sufficient quantities either), a R-36M2/UR100N replacement still seems miles away. The latter in particular has led to Russia only having some 40 (modernized) MIRVed R-36M2 with 400 warheads left, with those intended to serve until a MIRV replacement based on Topol-M is introduced around 2019. All Topol and Topol-M in service, and that ain't all that many really, are single-warhead. The rather numerous UR100N and the 1200+ warheads they mounted were retired pretty much wholesale over the last five years since they had reached their shelf life of 22-25 years (... since the last were built in the late 80s).
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